About that "ism"...

A favorite movie in our family is the 1938 film "You Can't Take It With You" starring Jean Arthur, Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Barrymore. The main characters in this lighthearted film grapple with the evils of capitalism versus the pleasures of home and family life, but with a few twists. The "family" depicted consists of extended relations along with several collected friends who live and work together under one roof, just doing what they enjoy most in a sort of cottage industry arrangement. The grandfather buys and sells stamps, one granddaughter studies ballet, two men make fireworks, and the mother writes plays on an old typewriter that was delivered to the house by mistake.

Grandpa Vanderhof, the family patriarch, has turned his back on the world of big business and the "isms" of capitalism, socialism, and fascism, though he admires heroism and patriotism. As he rants about "isms," his daughter Penny, the playwright, is working on a character who visits a monastery. Not sure where the plot is going, she is suddenly struck with the idea of her character having an "ism" in the monastery.

The clear message in this movie is that making big bucks doesn't lead to happiness. Only family, friends and enjoyable work can do that. The interesting thing is that the philosophy of the family in this film, lived in the face of threats by big bankers to force Vanderhof to sell his house, bears a strong resemblance to the philosophy of "Distributism" formulated by an early industrial era pope and a couple of large cigar-smoking Catholic writers from the early 20th century, G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc. An "ism" in the monastery, indeed.

Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society, writes on the Houston Catholic Worker website:

"The first encyclical on Catholic Social Teaching was issued in the midst of the industrial revolution, just before the dawn of the 20th century, by Pope Leo XIII. In Rerum Novarum he argued that in a just society, as many as possible should be owners.

"Ownership is an ideal. Pope Leo XIII recognized that this ideal was not being acknowledged in the modern world. The reason why ownership is important is that it provides independence and protects that basic unit of society, the family. This basic principle has been reaffirmed by all of the social encyclicals issued by the popes from Leo XIII to Pope Benedict XVI.

"G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc and others took Pope Leo XIII’s teaching and developed a social and economic idea known as Distributism. It differs from both Socialism and Capitalism. The best way of explaining it is that Socialism is based on communal rights and Capitalism is based on individual rights, but Distributism is based on family rights, and the idea that a society and an economy should be to protect, nurture, and serve that primary institution consisting of a father, a mother, and children.

"Distributism defends the ideal of ownership, keeping the connection between home and work rather than separating the two as the modern world has separated everything from everything else. We have seen the separation of work from home, the separation of business from morality, the separation of morality from religion, the separation of sex from birth, the separation of husband from wife.

"Chesterton argues that the academic economic models simply do not work. They do not consider moral consequences. The Social encyclicals have affirmed this point. In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict made it clear that every economic decision has moral consequences, and that we have to act with principles other than pure profit. If Capitalism is mere acquisition and accumulation, it will always provoke Communism. Big Business and Big Government are dueling giants that are chained to each other."

That, dear friends, is Distributism in a nutshell. At least, it is a beginning of a broad and interesting subject. Please feel free to leave a comment or question. To be continued...